Smoke
by Semblance of Sanity
Summary: "She's smoke/ I pull her in nice and slow/ She's a habit and I can't let go/ Blowing rings around my heart/ The one she stole." - "She's Smoke," A Thousand Horses.


_Punk!AU, featuring Harry and Hermione._

* * *

She slipped into his life so seamlessly he almost didn't realize she hadn't always been there. She didn't come quietly (they met when she slammed into him while running from the cops), but she _belonged _with him, dragging him (willingly) by the hand into danger and adventure.

He often wondered why she was like this - tattooed and pierced and drinking under a bridge in the middle of the sunny summer woods - when there were so many other things she could be doing. She was smart, way smarter than him or any of the others. She saw life in equations, probabilities, and causes with their inevitable effects. "You're too smart for us," he told her once. "You could be president."

She smirked. "President of the Social Outcasts." And everyone raised their bottles, weed, or fists and cheered. She wiggled her tongue piercing at him and winked, and he didn't bring it up again.

.

She called him at five in the morning to tell him she was on his roof. He threw on a shirt and climbed out through his window. He stared at her - smoking nonchalantly - and ran a hand through already messy hair. "The sun isn't even awake yet."

"She will be soon."

Harry sighed and sat next to her. "How do you know its a her?"

She handed him a cigarette and a lighter. "You know a man that punctual?"

He watched the fire from her lighter, mesmerized and still in a sleep fog. "Besides," she continued. "She's big, beautiful, and powerful. The source of light and of life. Couldn't possibly be a man."

He couldn't disagree, but he pretended to, because that was the game. "I think you're just trying to rationalize yourself as the sun."

Hermione took a drag from her cigarette and watched the smoke fade away. "Did you know that your body can't differentiate between carbon monoxide and oxygen? The carbon monoxide just slips into your bloodstream and poisons your body."

"You been playing Assassin's Creed?"

She shoved him. "Shut up."

"Why are you here, 'Mione?" Harry asked.

"What, you don't want me here?" she challenged defensively.

"I always want you here," he soothed. She saw the truth of the statement in his eyes, and averted her own.

"I wanted to watch the sunrise."

"Couldn't do that by yourself?" He was pushing, and he knew it, but he didn't have any inhibitions this early, so he wasn't nearly as worried as he should have been.

"Didn't want to. I'm with myself all the time." She blew smoke at him. It danced around his face and he brought his own cigarette to his lips.

"You're with me all the time."

"Exactly," she agreed, like that resolved everything. Harry felt it resolved nothing.

They didn't speak for a while, and the sky lightened, though the sun stayed hidden.

"Aunt Petunia's made me apply for universities," Harry told her. She didn't say anything for a while, and he watched the sky fill with light as the sun peeked over the horizon. She grabbed his hand, suddenly, and slid her body next to his. He squeezed her hand comfortingly and stared at the sun as it rose.

"Any of them want you?" she asked, her voice icy.

"A few, yeah," he tried to shrug, but she had taken his arm hostage, holding a little tighter than she meant to, perhaps. "Not sure if I'll go, anyway," he backtracked. "Don't need anymore adults telling me what I should be, where I should go -"

"No, of course you will," she decided for him, patting his arm and releasing her grip a bit. "Of course you'll go. Why would you stay? There's nothing for you here."

"Nothing for me there." Hermione took a long inhale of her cigarette and exhaled a list of benefits to going to university. Harry laughed. "But none of that can compare to this." He gestured vaguely.

Hermione pulled back and stared up at his face. He pushed his glasses up his nose. "This?" she asked.

"You know - cigarettes and sunrises." She looked at him like he was crazy.

"Don't be an idiot."

"No, sorry: I am an idiot. That's why I shouldn't go to uni."

"I don't like this conversation," Hermione declared, jumping up. She peered over the edge of the roof. "What kind of fracture do you think I would get if I jumped off the roof feet first?"

"The bad kind."

"No, I mean -"

"I know what you mean." He stood up and wrapped his arms around her. "I don't like this conversation."

She let him hold her.

Then she tilted her head back, pulled the cigarette from his mouth, and inhaled his exhale. Then she kissed him, nice and slow. "If I'm the sun," she whispered afterwards. "Then you are the moon, strong and steady and beautiful in a different way."

He accepted the compliment, but all he could think was that the sun and the moon are never together.

* * *

_Written for Fanfic Dominoes and Open Cateogy 3 Competitions._


End file.
